A disturbing new finding has surfaced, showing how evil the Communist government in Vietnam really is. Recent reports have shown that Vietnam’s rehab patients are subjected to forced labor. They get paid next to nothing for their pain and suffering, and are not permitted to leave the rehab centers for years at a time. Patients who refuse to work are either beaten severely, thrown in solitary confinement, and shocked with electric batons. Not only would the officials at the rehab centers keep the patients in custody for two to three years, but they would extend the patients stay for another several years, labeling the confinement as “post-rehabilitation management.” Basically, drug addicted individuals check into rehab, thinking they are receiving help from the government. What they are really getting out of it however, is imprisonment and exploitation.

Of all the different jobs that the drug-addicted patients are forced to perform, peeling cashew nuts is the most common of all. Vietnam is one of the world’s largest importers of cashew nuts, with the United States and many European countries being the biggest buyers of their products. The majority of these cashews are hand-peeled and handled by the addicted patients from Vietnam’s detention facilities. The patients are basically prisoners of the Vietnamese government, exploited and abused into providing cheap labor for the Communist Party. For all the hours of hard work they are forced to put in, which ranges from 6-10 hours a day, the workers would be lucky to receive a few dollars a month. Even if they were lucky enough to be paid, the center would slap them with charges for services and whatnot, leaving them with nothing in the very end. With all the pain and suffering that has been put into the selling of these cashew nuts, the media has labelled the products from Vietnam as “blood cashews.”

The Communist Party has committed atrocities on its own citizens for more than 35 years. This is just the latest in a cycle of evil and greed that has characterized the Party long before they ever became the rulers of the country. There are currently 123 “drug rehabilitation” centers in Vietnam, trapping over 40,000 poor lives who believed that they were going to get treatments for their respective habits. When finally released, the victims are intimidated and threatened into keeping silent. It should be clear by now that these “rehab centers” in Vietnam are not rehab at all. If all the evidence is not indication enough, the relapse rate of rehab patients in Vietnam ranges from 70-80%. Andrew Marshall of Time Magazine suggests that the relapse rate may even be higher than that, possibly as high as 95%. It is a heartbreaking truth, but for a drug afflicted individual in Vietnam, there is no way out.